Traditional e-commerce on the Internet involves selecting one or more items of merchandise from a vendor's website, for example adding the merchandise to a virtual shopping cart. Once a buyer has completed the selection process, a check-out process is performed. As part of the check-out process, the buyer provides a first and last name, shipping address, billing address, and billable financial account information (e.g., credit card/debit card account number, expiration data and security code). If the user has established an account with the merchant website, in which case, the user may have provided some or all of the personal information previously. Otherwise, the user must input the required account information each time on each website as part of the check-out process. When performed via a typical computer or laptop with a physical keyboard and mouse, the data entry may be relatively easy, although input errors do occur.
In recent years, availability of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have driven the growth of e-commerce. Although websites have been modified to better display on relatively smaller screens of mobile devices, account set-up and/or the check-out process still require the buyer to enter the necessary information to complete the purchase. On a mobile device, such data entry, often with a “virtual” keyboard, can be very difficult and/or prone to errors.
Hence a need exists for simplifying personal data entry for e-commerce, for example, by securely pre-populating the necessary information so that the buyer may complete the process without difficult data entry.